QuantMig: Quantifying migration scenarios for better policy

Drivers

Funding

Horizon Europe

Geographic focus

Europe

Dates

2/1/2020 to 7/31/2023

COMPLETED

About

Decision-making tools to help European policymakers anticipate and respond to future migration scenarios.

Key Findings

1. Even with advances in technology and the best science, we cannot predict the scale of migration flows. Uncertainty is a key feature of human migration and not just a gap in policy or scientific evidence.
2. Better forecasting can help reduce uncertainty about migration flows in the short term, but, there will always be unpredicted migration flows. To respond, we need to actively prepare for these situations; long-term scenario planning, creating contingency plans, and designing policies flexibly can help.
3. Migration drivers do not operate in isolation.  Their interplay increases the unpredictability of migration, especially when armed conflicts or climate change are also at play. One very important and interconnected driver of migration is when people are nervous or unclear about if and how policies will change (what we call policy uncertainty). 
4. We can have better forecasts and mitigate some uncertainty, but to do that we need more data; larger amounts of imperfect or partial data are more informative than smaller amounts of higher-quality data.
5. Migration flows to Europe, even high-impact ones, do not substantially change the demographic foundations of Europe. Migration plays an important role in the population and labour force dynamics across the EU, but Europe’s demographics are shaped primarily by low fertility and an aging population, not by migration flows.

Project Outcomes

– Advanced the methodology of scenario generation and furthered the understanding of the conceptual foundations of European migration flows.
– Derived a distinctive set of custom-made harmonised statistical estimates of migration flows.

– Developed and applied rigorous and innovative methods for simulating migration flows, describing scenario uncertainty, and providing early warnings.